


RPF Drabbles

by agoodwoman



Category: The X-Files RPF
Genre: F/M, Gillovny, Gillovny RPF, RPF
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-05-31 12:59:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 29
Words: 19,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6470863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agoodwoman/pseuds/agoodwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Through the years, gillovny moments. New chapters will have ***NEW*** next to them for one week.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1993, You Fainted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during casting, 1993

 

She opened her eyes and looked up at the young man smiling at her. He wasn’t so young, actually. He was 8 years older than her but he looked like a puppy with his hair fluffy and sticking up like that.

“What happened?” she asked with her half American accent.

He smiled at her with the charm of a man who knew how to make women undress before he paid the bill for dinner. “You fainted…straight into my arms. You know, if you wanted my attention you didn’t have to go to such extremes.”

She sat up against her car and looked at him. She had just signed the biggest contract for the most amount of money anyone in her family had ever earned and was feeling light headed. She remembered walking back to her car but then she blacked out.

“I fainted,” she repeated and he nodded as he sat down next to her.

“Did the responsibility of having to show up at a job every day suddenly get to you?” he asked. He probably had to be the funniest and smartest guy in every conversation and she was okay with that. She could laugh at a few jokes to appease him. Except she found him charming against her better judgement.

“You wanna get out of here?” he offered. “Take a drive?”

She looked at him and knew she wasn’t his type so he must be offering an olive branch of sorts. Friendship since they were going to be working a lot together since they flew out on Saturday to film the pilot. She needed to learn what a pilot was compared to the rest of the series. Television terms went over her head.

“I think we have to be back here in fifteen hours,” she said as she searched her bag for a cigarette.

“There’s a place in Santa Barbara you’d love. Great food, cheap drinks. It’ll be the last time you can venture out in California and people won’t know your face,” he invited.

She found a pen and paper in her bag that had too much junk in it and never enough cigarettes. “This is where I’m staying. You can pick me up in an hour and we’ll go.”

Except they didn’t just go for a two hour drive for a meal. They spent the next fifteen hours together followed by the next twenty four years . They had too many drinks on not enough food, he touched her thigh under the table and she didn’t mind. They eventually ate enough food to fill their bellies before making it back to his car where they steamed up the windows and they made silly excuses about it not interfering with their ‘work’.


	2. 1996/1997, Are You Jealous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during 1996/1997 filming

She looked at him across her trailer and it suddenly dawned on her. “Wait a minute, are you jealous?”

He scoffed at the insinuation and waved a hand at her dismissively.

“You are jealous!” she realised. “You’re jealous of him?”

He shook his head at her. “No, I’m not jealous.”

“I told you before he’s a friend. What do you care?” she asked. She folded her arms across her front in a mimicking way to her alter ego that required this hair cut and button down suits. “What possible reason could you have to care where I’m going later?”

“I’m not jealous. I’m just trying to be your friend,” he said with a shrug. “Forget it.”

“Then say you’re happy I have a friend and I’ll see you tomorrow at work,” she quipped as she shed her character’s jacket. “You can go. I need to get changed.”

“Just come over and hang out with me,” he suggested.

“Haven’t we spent enough time together?” she replied as she threw back a quote he used to describe their temultuous relationship. “Will the sound guys be there? What about the AD?”

“I asked you to go to dinner, not the entire set,” he said as he rolled his eyes.

“I can’t cancel,” she said with a sigh. “Tomorrow if we finish close to on time I can go for dinner.”

“I can’t,” he said with a shrug as he approached her. “I have a thing tomorrow night.”

She looked at him. She was aware of what he was doing. He was getting in her space and approaching to make some inappropriate gesture to distract her from going. But there was way too much between them now. Other people in their lives they made promises to.

“Don’t,” she told him firmly.

He put two hands on her hips and pulled her towards him. They were still dressed like Mulder and Scully but they were talking like David and Gillian. They were always people who should not be together. According to their boss it was platonic, with or without the cameras rolling. What Chris didn’t know couldn’t hurt them but they were all tired with the dance around the tension. If their characters could get invovled maybe he would leave her the hell alone.

His face drew closer to hers and his lips brushed against hers. “Don’t?”

“After today, after now, after this, really don’t anymore,” she said as she closed her eyes and awaited his kiss.

“Okay,” he promised.

He would break that vow along with many others because it was a hopeless cause with them but at least they tried.

 

 


	3. 1996/1997, I can’t believe you talked me into this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during 1996/1997 filming

She was sitting at the back of the theatre with a ball cap on over her head and his jacket around her shoulders. This was a bad idea, a very bad idea and yet there they were. Any moment they were bound to be spotted and the jig would be up. Everyone would find out they were a pair of lying liars that did spend time together when they weren’t working. But neither of them can admit they do hang out because the media would explode and that would overshadow everything they’ve been working towards with their careers.

That’s what he said anyway. That’s what he told the press, his publicist and anyone who would listen when they weren’t alone in a room together.

Right now, however, they weren’t alone in a room together. They were in a public movie theatre where anyone could take a photo of them leaving so the fact that they were doing this was just a little more than risky.

“Stop fidgeting and watch the movie,” he whispered before he shoved another handful of popcorn into his mouth.

She looked up at him and took the Diet Coke from his other hand. They held eyes as she took a long sip from the single straw he had put in there.

“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” she muttered.

“Hey we can’t just spend our time together in bed, hiding out at your house or my apartment,” he whispered.

Someone turned around and shushed them and his eyes widened.

“Man, Canadians really are concerned with politeness,” he quipped.

“Sssshhh,” she told him.

He took the pop back from her and placed it in the cup holder so he could maneuver his hand on top of hers. They were on a date and it made her more nervous than when he came over to “talk” but they ended up in bed together instead. This was feelings and romance and she didn’t know how to handle that from him when he normally treated her with an air of cavalier dismissal when they were around other people.

She didn’t take it personally because she had one hundred other things to worry about than the way he talked about her in the media. She could always confront him to talk it out and he would apologize and explain what he really meant. Most of the time she believed him but more than that, she just wanted to believe they were more than just people who worked long hours and used each other’s bodies as respite for the crappy conditions of their work contracts.

At least they were finally getting paid the same.

“I think I love you and I’m terrified,” the male character on the screen said.

She could feel him rolling his eyes in the seat next to her.

“Lines Mulder will never get to say to Scully, item 32,” he whispered in her ear.

She looked up at him. “Does he?”

He smiled and leaned in. “Oh he does, he’s hopelessly in love with grey aliens and Dana Scully.”

He kissed her softly and she tried to keep it chaste but it was difficult with his hand traveling up her thigh and the other reaching inside the jacket to her breast. She pulled her face away and he kissed her jawline.

“If you want me to pay attention to the movie you should pick something that has better dialogue,” he whispered in her hear and nibbled on the lobe.

She pushed him away. “You picked this one.”

He looked up at the screen. “Oh right.”


	4. 1996/1997, Nobody Needs to Know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during 1996/1997 filming

“Where are we going?” she asked as he pulled her down the long hallway out of the studio.

The air was cold for September in Vancouver and the dampness in the air began to make her hair frizz.

“We’re taking a break,” he said sternly.

“We have to be back in an hour,” she reminded him as she tugged to let her hand free. “David, stop.”

“I need a break. I’m not waiting around in that trailer while they reset,” he insisted. “Come on, nobody needs to know.”

She looked over her shoulder to the crew running inside the studio door. They were told they had a fifteen minute break to set up the next shot. Soon after, they were stripped of their costumes. Their fifteen minute warning turned into advice to break for an hour. They had been there for eight and she was ready for bed.

She nodded her head and looked up at him. “Back in an hour?”

He nodded a promise to get her back. She wanted to be a professional actress and not keep anyone waiting. She wanted to please the director, be a good soldier and not keep them there past the fourteen hour mark. David would show up late to set just because his presence could hold up their whole day. Why was she getting into a car with him?

“Where are we going?” she asked. It was a line her character used too often.

“They have these great fajitas at a bar in West Vancouver,” he said with a smile as he pulled onto the back road that lead them to the North Shore Studios. “It’s almost like the ones in LA.”

“No, that’s too far from here,” she protested but it wasn’t firm enough for him to turn the car around.

They were already gone. When they arrived she pulled a ball cap on over her mess of red hair and he smiled at the gesture of maintaining an aloof persona.

“You think no one will notice you now?”

“You’re not the one who stands out just because of your hair,” she grumbled.

When they arrived the bartender nodded to them as though they were expected and a plate of tacos arrived. Sizzling steak meat arrived on a hot black skillet and a basket of corn flour tortillas.

“I’m trying not to eat wheat,” she pouted as he handed one he had created one for her. It had guacamole, salsa, sour cream, meat and vegetables stuffed inside. It looked delicious.

“This is corn,” he said positively. “You can work it off after.”

The wink he gave her was too familiar. The same wink he gave her in a crappy bar outside of LA before she spent the next twenty four hours naked and wrapped around him. That wink made her crazy in more ways than one.

“We can’t,” she insisted. She took a bite of the fajita and her eyes closed. It was so good it made her heart race. The cumin and salt was divine.

“You’re not technically married anymore,” he quipped.

The divorce would be announced soon but that didn’t matter. When she finished her bite she pointed a manicured finger at him.

“You’re supposed to be supportive,” she reminded him.

“Can’t I be supportive while I have my head between your thighs?” He said crudely and she almost choked on her next bite. He smiled through a mouthful of meat. “Can’t I?”

He had been more than supportive. He had been a friend to her while he offered his place to stay when the paparazzi decided to try to catch her at her house. The Canadian paps never bothered intruding but the ones that flew up from LA were particularly heinous. They got wind of her divorce and descended upon Vancouver for a snap shot of what? Her alone? She was always alone.

He paid the bill and escorted her to his car with an arm around her shoulder. He had downed a beer in the time it took to finish their food but she had refrained. She needed a clear head if she was going to finish getting through four pages of chunky shit dialogue.

As if he had planned it, he took her down to a look out point in a West Vancouver neighbourhood and pulled her out of the car to look at the skyline of the city. They kissed under clouded sky. Somehow they ended up in the back of his car with her trousers on the floor and him between the V of her legs, ready and hard for her. When she sunk down on him he pulled the cap of her head and pulled the red strands out of her face.

To anyone walking their dog they looked like teenagers meeting in secret and she felt the familiar thrill to her adolescence. He was good at helping her forget the realities of their super-stardom she didn’t want and he yearned for.

They made it back to the studio only thirty minutes late.


	5. 1996/1997, This Is Awkward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during 1996/1997 Filming

She pulled on the lapels of her jacket and handed the overcoat to wardrobe. She would shed the rest of her costume in her trailer and hand out the crumpled clothing to the PA. It took a bit of pulling but she finally got her stubborn trailer door open.

Her suit jacket and shoes went first. Her fitted shirt went next before she stepped out of her beige slacks. She might not be the kind of person who picked the best clothing but the colours they dressed her in left a lot to be desired. Beige, pastels, polyester and cinched at the waist.

“Uh,” a man’s voice was heard from behind her.

She turned around without anything to cover herself and saw him. Naked.

“David!” she cried out and turned away from him.

She saw it all anyway. He looked the same, a bit more fit than thin from the last time she saw him in such a state. It was a bit different when he wasn’t taking her clothes off and kissing her neck. From afar he looked as large as he did when he was dressed his suits and spouting clunky dialogue that made no sense to her brain.

“Well, this is awkward,” he laughed as he picked up his boxer shorts.

“What are you doing?” she asked as she glanced over his shoulder. “Why are you in here?”

She could hear him approaching from behind and she prayed he would dress and leave. He wasn’t leaving. He was closing in on her.

“I can see now this isn’t mine,” he whispered as he drew a finger up her bare back.

He was talking about something else like he always did.

“What gave that away?” she asked breathlessly as she cursed the goosebumps forming on her skin.

“There were a few indicators,” he replied lowly as he turned her around. “You being in here for one.”

She looked up at him and her cheeks flushed. He still hadn’t put on his boxers. “We’re not supposed to do this.”

His mouth leaned into hers and she tasted the green apples he shared with her at lunch. He wasn’t supposed to taste sweet and forbidden. He was supposed to be off limits.

When she opened her eyes he was smiling at her. He pulled her arms down from in front of her. “You really look amazing.”

“No,” she laughed and his face lit up. He loved it when she laughed, even at herself. “I’m a mother!”

“You should see yourself how we see you,” he told her.

“Who is we?” she asked.

“Everyone else.”

He pressed his mouth to hers and she kissed him back. She kissed him until she remembered why she had to stop kissing him before. This was bad for them and how they worked. They could be friends or this but never both at the same time. They weren’t adult enough to do this without petulant feelings getting in the way.


	6. 1996/1997, Come Over Here And Make Me

“What did you say?” she asked with her voice taught and full of fire.

“You heard me,” he taunted with the smugness of a man who just appeared on three different magazine covers in a week. “Come over here and make me.”

It was disgusting how much he loved the attention. At least she was trying to be a serious actress. He wanted the fame and fortune without the hassle of the fans. She didn’t have the patience to tell him he was being contradictory for the sake of being contradictory. She realized quickly if you told him the weather had been nice lately he could argue any point to prove you wrong.

“Nice was subjective to the person stating it so you couldn’t definitively state whether anything was nice or good to everyone.”

She had grown tired of rolling her eyes at him, rolling her eyes at the things he said in the press and the very sight of him. She was tired of working fourteen hour days and not having time with her kid. She was tired of fighting with her soon to be ex. She was tired of the comments about her new boyfriend. She wanted nothing more than to slap the grin off his face.

“Put the magazine down,” she ordered again.

“Well, I’m sure I’ve walked into his trailer while he’s changing, thinking it was my trailer, of course, shocked him stark naked. I think what his fans truly want to here is that…umm…he’s apparently, and I believe this is true, well hung. In terms of his body, he’s got, you know…” Anderson is all but squirming by now. “I can’t believe you put me on the spot here. He’s in good shape. Good shape."

David tossed the magazine on the counter top.

“What the hell?” he was practically shouting.

“What do you mean what the hell?” she was confused.

“I told them I was in your trailer by mistake,” he explained. “Now we don’t have our stories straight.”

“I’m not lying to people about things that did or didn’t happen,” she snapped as she pushed past him to move into her living room. On her one day off from work he had to show up at her place with a magazine and a raging temper. He used to show up with wine and bad movies. “You weren’t the one who was married at the time.”

“I had a girlfriend at the time,” he reminded her as he followed her.

“You certainly didn’t seem to care one way or another when I had a boyfriend or a husband,” she snapped back.

He grabbed her arm and spun her around. “Well you can’t say that kind of shit anymore. I met someone.”

“Oh now there’s rules?” she said petulantly as she tried to remove her arm from his grasp but he was bigger than her. It drove her crazy how they didn’t see eye to eye physically or emotionally.

He pulled her closer to her and she recognized the look in his eyes. It wasn’t anger, it was desire. It wasn’t frustration at the quote, it was want towards her.

“Don’t,” she told him.

He kissed her hard and she hated herself for opening her mouth to taste him. She probably tasted like the cigarette she smoked. He tasted like the beer he had while he read the magazine before he drove over there on a Sunday to yell at her. He kissed her again and again as he peeled the flowery dress from her willowy frame. He made a comment about her need for a tan as he nipped at the ivory skin on her hips and marked her body with his mouth.

She took him in her mouth and he called her beautiful. Before he fell off the cliffs into ecstasy, she left him wanting more because that was how they toyed with one another.

Their sex was rough and angry because of all the things they couldn’t have because they had the show. She told him she hated him before she came and he left a mark on her shoulder that make up or wardrobe would have to worry about.

She told herself after he left it would be the last time. He got married shortly after their afternoon tryst and they managed to keep that promise until the next time they failed. Which they did, continually and constantly. It was the curse of wanting and needing what you shouldn’t and not being able to keep your hand away from a fire you wanted to get burned by.


	7. 1997, I see the way you look at me when you think I don't notice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the 1997 Emmy's

It took her all of thirty five minutes to finish doing her press rounds for their recent show win before she was able to get to a party where her mandatory attendance was required. It didn’t make sense to her for them to all be at the same party but she was still a Los Angeles Alien, as her lovely costar liked to call her.

He nicknamed her that when they first met and everything inside of her told her not to let him peel the soft cotton panties down her thighs. So she argued with herself and took them off herself. They paid the price for the indiscretion of sleeping with a practical stranger because they’ve spent the last five years getting to know one another. 

As it turns out, he didn’t like her very much and the feeling was more than mutual. The kind of man who disliked waiting on hair and make up was a man she would rather not spend fourteen to sixteen hours a day with. 

These were the thoughts that rushed through her mind as she made her way through the party and smiled for every prompted photo. She had a cigarette, avoided him as much as possible and she snuck more than one glass of champagne. 

The following morning she paid the price for her late night with the headache of a lifetime. This would be her penance on the flight back to Vancouver. 

He sat down on the cushy first class seat next to her so that it rocked her chair and sighed loudly. She took off her giant sunglasses and peered at his smug expression.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He buckled his seat belt and then hers and she wished to actually have the ability to shoot daggers from her eyes. 

“Safety first,” he quipped as he set the Golden Globe on the tray between them. 

“This isn’t your seat,” she said. 

“I got the ticket agent to switch me,” he said and smiled at the flight attendant who was walking through the plane. “Nice glasses by the way.”

“If you’re going to sit with me this is a quiet space,” she instructed in the same soft tone she reserved for young children. 

She put her sunglasses back on and turned her back to him to look out the window. Except she couldn’t concentrate because she could feel his eyes on her and it was bothering her. It bothered her that he watched her like that. A sigh escaped her and she turned back to him. “What?”

“Nothing,” he shrugged and pulled out a copy of Sport’s Illustrated. It was the swimsuit edition, of course. He snapped the magazine loudly as if to poke at the headache.

“I see the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice,” she remarked. 

If he was going to sit with her, take up her space and make so much noise she would bother him back. They were children sometimes. 

He looked over to her. “How’s that?”

“Misplaced frustration,” she stated.

He nodded. “Probably but you’re wrong about why I’m frustrated.”

“Why’s that?” she probed. 

“How do you feel when you really want a thing but can’t have it?” he retorted. 

It took her a moment to let the reality of what he confessed sink in. She was way too tired to have this conversation on a crowded plane and keep her wits about her. She ran her tongue along her plump bottom lip and took a long drink from her bottled Evian. 

“Well, Chris would just tell you to put it in your work.”

He laughed and she tried not to notice that other people around them were trying to watch without staring. 

“I’ll remember that for tomorrow when we get to work,” he said and they both laughed.


	8. 1999, Milagro

She donned her wardrobe that included a fitted skirt, blouse and lacy bra with a front clasp. Everything was black for this scene. From the bikini panties to the black bra with lace on the cups. There were no nylons for her today and she would feel exposed without them. All of this was more sexy than anything Scully normally put on, but when you're portraying a man's wanton fantasy that might happen. 

She was standing in front of the mirror with her pages in hand as she went over her lines for the following scene. There was a knock at the trailer door and someone called to her they needed her to set in fifteen minutes.

David wasn’t on the call sheet that day so she knew they would be running on time. Her mouth smirked a little at the dig to him but then she rebuked herself. That petty crap wasn’t how she was trying to be, especially towards him.

As infuriating as he was sometimes, fueling it with negative thoughts and remarks didn’t help her. She was going to be better.

Maybe she should meditate before the scene.

 _Fuck it_ , she thought.

She went out for a cigarette instead.

On her walk across the lot to the studio she finished off the smoked she started earlier and contemplated making a phone call but something caught her eye.

Across the lot where the actors parked was her co-star and his black BMW 540i. _He wasn’t supposed to be on set that day what the hell was he doing here?_

He wasn’t dressed-down in basketball shorts or ripped T-shirts like he was getting himself ready for a shoot. He looked like he had just come from an interview at the very least. His hair was done and he had dressed in jeans and a button up shirt. Her eyes caught that he hadn’t shaved yet.

“No kiss hello?” he quipped sarcastically as she walked by.

“Maybe we could just _say_ hello?” she replied acerbically.

They did kiss hello but she was trying to stop that. She needed to quit cigarettes and letting him into her bed. Each vice made her feel good and bad in a lot of ways.

He followed her to the studio and pulled open the stage door as he had the day they met on that very lot.

“Thanks,” she muttered.

His hand wrapped around her arm and he pulled her towards him. “Doesn’t this remind you of 1993?”

“Why are you feeling so nostalgic?” 

“What’s up your ass?” he shot back. “Why are you being so snarky?”

“What are you doing here?” she countered.

“I was done my shot-list and wanted to show Chris,” he replied but she could tell that was a lie.

He wouldn’t ask for a once-over from their boss, let alone bring it all the way down there unless he had some other excuse.

She turned to face him in the narrow hallway and took a step towards him. “Liar.”

“I’m giving you a few days off next week, be nice to me,” he replied with a smug grin and took a step towards her so their bodies were almost touching. “Besides, you should be happy I’m here. I’m looking out for you.”

She stepped back and rolled her eyes. “You’re not looking out for anything except your own interests.”

  
****

There were five shots to get that day and the final shot would be of them on the bed. They were kissing passionately. Her hands were in his hair. They were touching each other everywhere and he was undressing her slowly as the camera was panning over them in such an intimate way that she felt like there was another set of hands on her.

Except they weren’t the hands she was used to. The hands she had grown accustomed to on her body belonged to someone else’s husband. The fact that he was bound to someone else kept them on better behaviour but it didn’t make them nicer to each other. It made things more tense if that was possible.

They called cut again and her bed-mate pulled his hands off her. She wiped at the corner of her mouth and pushed herself off the bed. As she settled herself in her chair someone came by to touch up her make-up and hand her a bottle of water.

“Gillian, we’re actually gonna call it for the day for you,” Kim said. “We’re gonna do some exteriors in an hour so you can go.”

She looked at her watch and her eyebrows shot up in surprise. They had been there eight hours. If she actually left the lot she might not get called back and that meant a whole evening to herself.

She and John had some dialogue shots as well as the technicality of blocking the scene on the bed. 

“Great!”

Just as she was collecting her script, phone and packet of cigarettes a hand closed around her upper arm.

“Go _away_ ,” she muttered.

Her good mood had just dissipated.

“I’ll walk you out,” he offered.

She knew better than to argue with him on set or in front of the crew. Too much got out to the public and the last thing she needed was to be asked in yet another interview why she and David weren’t getting along. They got along just fine. It was this territorial crap he pulled with her occasionally that made them fight.

“What?” she asked as she tried to get away from prying ears.

His pace kept up to hers easily. She hated that he was so tall.

“Why can’t I spend the day on set?” he asked. “I was working when you weren’t paying attention.”

“I see that you brought your laptop, I see that you took your notebook out eventually but I don’t see why it had to be today while I was doing _that_ ,” she snapped.

 _That_ being making out with another man for work. She should know why and she should have known better. 

"I had to make sure there was no tongue," he quipped. "I wouldn't want someone being a creep around you."

"Fuck off," she muttered.

His hand caught her again and spun her to face him. “Would you stop walking?”

She looked around where they were and tried to express why she wouldn’t with a look. That as much he seemed to catch on. His grip loosened and he followed her to her trailer.

When the door shut and they were alone her hands pushed on his chest.

“Why!” she whispered angrily.

“I had to be here when you left,” he said with an equally quiet voice that was nothing but glib.

He was infuriating. She wished he made her feel nothing.

“ _Why_?”

“I had to be here before you left,” he said. There was a beat between them and when she wouldn't answer him, he felt the need to fill the silence with a confession. “I wanted to be the last person you kissed.”

She pushed on his chest. “We said last time that it was the _last_ time. You agreed we were going to cut that shit out.”

That shit was hurting too many people these days. It hurt them both as much as it soothed the aching and yearning they had to be together. It was infuriating that they worked so well sexually but they couldn't stand to have a week without hurt feelings or miscommunication. They weren't supposed to have this complicated working relationship. They were  _just_ supposed to work together. They could try to be friends but that probably meant not having the other thing that made them so frustrated and happy.

He stepped closer to her and she could feel the heat from his body. He watched her kissing someone else for the last two hours. Of course, he would be territorial and moody. Of course, he would be wanting her after seeing her with someone else. He was like a cat who needed to mark his territory.

She might call him a dog but dogs were more loyal and faithful.

Her eyes met his and she asked a question she didn’t know if she wanted the answer to: “Just one kiss?”

His hand pulled at her hip to bring their bodies together and she could feel his answer pressing into her belly. “Sure.”

Another lie.

“Just a kiss then,” she agreed.

Except it wasn’t just one kiss on her mouth. He kissed her body down to her sex and tasted her again. He kissed her skin that had been exposed by another man for their job that his character wasn’t allowed to do because they had fucked up career choices.

As he pushed himself into her with her wardrobe skirt around her waist, she noticed his pants weren’t even off all the way and she wondered if she would have to explain a mystery stain to Shelly tomorrow. They should know by now not to ask questions about her clothing. He had been helping her soil them for six years. As he pumped in and out of her she could tell this wasn’t the last time either. It was hard when the thing you craved also made you feel so angry at the same time.


	9. 2002, I Lost You Before/I Loved You and Lost You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Late Spring 2002

She was happy to be packing up her things from Los Angeles and moving abroad. The house would stay but the things she wanted with her, items that she couldn’t look around and call a place home without.

A knock at the door and she checked her watch. Piper wasn’t due back for a few more hours and the moving people were coming tomorrow. Suddenly she panicked. Was it today?

She answered the door without shoes or a bra. Her hair was pulled up into a ponytail and she had foregone make up. She was a mess like this most of the time when people were constantly pulling on her and touching her up.

Maybe the other side of the door was someone who would come and go quickly.

It wasn’t. It was him.

“Hi,” she said in surprise.

“Can I come in?” he asked as he looked around her door step. He was acting nervous and jittery which was not usual for him.

She opened the door and looked around past him. His nervousness might have something to do with being spotted by a paparazzi but surely he wasn’t followed. Someone like Paris Hilton would have to be more interesting than them.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Her tone was soothing and mothering. It was an automatic response to when he was tense.

“I’m really not,” he confessed and pulled her away from the door into the foyer of the house. “I don’t like that you’re leaving.”

“I told you I’m starting a play in October,” she explained again. “I have to go.”

“But then what? I can’t fly to London on a whim from here,” he muttered.

She realized he was expressing his selfish wants, needs and desires to her on purpose because she frequently gave into those. As much as she liked to take care of others it was to her detriment. She had to learn to be better than that. London air, being on the soil she grew up on and doing proper theatre would be good for that too. She could be someone else besides a serious scientist with a dye job that made her impossible to hide in a crowd.

“I can’t stay here for you,” she reminded him.

He knew that. He knew she wasn’t his as much as he wasn’t hers. He belonged to other people and was building something here. His hands were on her hips and she was trying to fight the urge to kiss him. He also knew what his touch did to her.

“I loved you and then you were gone,” she said.

He flinched at the four-letter word because it wasn’t like them to express such basic emotions. But he knew the argument. It was five years ago when he stopped being good for her as a friend. He wanted her to settle down and she couldn’t do that after feeling trapped by conformity for three years.

“And I knew I lost you,” she admitted. Maybe he was hers for a time but not anymore. He wore a ring and called someone else his wife. “I’m okay with that.”

“I lost you,” he told her. “I’m not losing you again.”

“Don’t,” she pleaded. “Don’t do this. I’m going to London.”

His mouth inched towards hers. “But I’ll miss you.”

“We’ll stay in touch. We’ll be friends who email or talk on the phone,” she whispered.

His lips made contact and it was a sweet kiss. Unlike their usual ones of a heated frenzy while he tried to shed her of her clothing, this one was soft and delicate.

“This isn’t good-bye,” she promised.

“What kind of friends do this and stay in touch?” he asked as his hand slipped under her fitted shirt.

His palm covered the cool flesh of her breast as he kissed her neck. She could feel herself wanting more but she knew they shouldn’t.

“I need you,” he told her before he kissed her again.

And then she saw him again, the man she was used to. He was shedding her of her clothing as he laid her on the cool tile of her foyer to fuck her good-bye.


	10. 2003, I'll kick his ass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set November 2003

 

The November air felt cold against the exposed skin on her stomach and she had wished she wore a warmer jacket. The cafe he asked to meet her at was one they had frequented before. Not too many celebrity sightings they would see paparazzi but enough that they didn’t stick out like sore thumbs.

She kept her sunglasses on anyway but remembered without her red hair, she was just another blonde in the crowd in California. He spotted her right away, no matter what her hair colour.

He approached her, smiling at the girl behind the counter before joining her at the rounded booth. He slid next to her and kissed her on the cheek. She pulled away and they exchanged a look.

“You look great,” he commented as he tried to close the gap between them. “What?”

She shook her head. “It’s different for me right now.”

He rolled his eyes and gave her an inch of space on the booth. If that. His hair was a little longer these days and she saw the remnants of a goatee he had grown for his movie but he looked good. He looked really good.

He kissed her cheek again and she tried to relax into it. “I mean it, you look great.”

“I lost that happy weight I gained,” she said self consciously as she tugged on the waistband of her pants.

“Are you still happy?” he asked as he studied her. She could feel him taking her appearance. “I think no.”

She shrugged. “It’s not what I expected but it seems like that happens too often.”

“The filmmaker isn’t appreciative?” he asked and nodded toward the young woman walking by. He ordered them each a coffee the way she liked hers and a few snacks. He waited for the young woman to leave the table and put his arm back around her. “So?”

“I don’t know,” she said “When we first got together it was just much different and what I needed.”

He pulled the sleeves up her wrists and she pulled them back down to cover a few marks she had purposely tried to hide. “That better not be what I think it is.”

“It’s not,” she assured him. _Not really,_ she thought. “It’s fine.”

It wasn’t really. They got into an argument and she slapped him. He grabbed her arm and the marks visible were the result of bruising too easily and pale skin.

“If he’s going to treat you like shit, I’m gonna kick his ass,” he said confidently as though he was happy to be her white knight. He puffed his chest and gave her a knowing look.

“When was the last time _you_ got into a fight that wasn’t staged and won?” she retorted with the hope of taking the conversation off her and the status of a man she wasn’t sure she was going to marry.

He thought for a moment. “I think it’s happened?”

“I think you’d remember better if it had,” he told her. “But keep me posted.”

Their coffees arrived along with a fruit plate, a chocolate croissant and a Greek salad with the right amount of feta. He tore a piece of the pastry off and held it to her mouth.

“I said we can’t,” she told him before taking the flaky food from his fingers with her teeth.

He pressed his mouth into her neck and breathed in. “Then you shouldn’t ask me for coffee if you _only_ want it to mean coffee.”

Her eyes closed and she felt the rush of being in his presence, the thrill of being wanted by him and the surge of her desire for him. “What is _just_ coffee?”

“I don’t know,” he said as he slipped his hand in the waistband of the back of her jeans to cup her backside. He pinched at her flesh. “I only have occasional coffees with you.”

She looked up at him through her lashes and studied his face. “Liar.”

“I wouldn’t lie about that to you,” he assured her. He took a bite of the croissant using his free hand and nodded.

“I’m sorry about your dad,” she said with another attempt to distract him.

“I am too,” he whispered. His mouth touched along her collar bone and he breathed in the scent of her hair. “You know, if you were anyone else and this was a different time I would have you in the parking lot by now.”

“Good thing this is now and you’re a better man,” she told him as his hand slipped from her jeans to her hip.

Every touch of his felt sensual and raw. That’s what she tried to duplicate with other people and failed.

“Listen, if the guy really is being a jackass, you’d tell me right?”

She saw the earnest question in his eyes and she nodded.

He kissed her deeply as though it could be their last. That seemed to be the way he kissed her at all, as though he was going to make the most of it. She hated starting anything with him when her heart was trying to be with anyone else besides him. This was the kind of thing that made her crave a cigarette or a bottle of gin. He was like a bad vice and she had an addictive behaviour.

In two hours her white jeans, wrap around sweater and thin jacket would be crumpled in a ball on the floor of a hotel room thirty miles up the road next to his ripped jeans and button up shirt. He would make her quake like she hadn’t since the last time her home address read Los Angeles and their show was ending. It would be just another sin on a list of lies they would tell everyone.


	11. 2008, “Don’t you dare throw that snowba-, goddammit!”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during IWTB filming

They weren’t on a sound stage. They were in the middle of a Canadian town with not much to provide besides the backdrop their boss desired and he wasn’t in a good place. He wasn’t happy with how things were unraveling for him personally and things were about to get a lot worse.

A dust of snow flew past his shoulder and he heard her laugh impishly in the distance. Not right now, Gillian. I’m not in the fucking mood.

He turned around and saw her. She was laughing and excited to be there. When the cameras rolled she would shut off the jovial part of her personality and look at him with the saddened eyes of a woman disappointed by a man who didn’t live up to expectations. He felt that on a different level.

“Don’t you dare throw that snowba-” he warned and it hit him squarely in the face. “God dammit!”

Her face registered his anger and exasperation. Instead of remorse she laughed. It burst out of her and she wiped away a tear with a gloved finger.

He stooped down to pick up a handful of snow and she held her finger up. “Don’t!”

“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right?” he warned as he started towards her.

Fear registered in her eyes and she tried to run through the thick snow away from him. The snow was too deep and her legs were too short. His stride caught him up to her easily and her retreat was futile.

“No!” she screamed as he tackled her into a snowbank.

He shoved his hand of snow down her front and pushed it into the warmth of her breast under her shirt.

“No!” she cried out again but she was laughing. She was trying to push him off of her but as they struggled in the snow they only buried themselves further.

“Oh yes!” he growled but he was laughing too.

“They’re going to have to redo my hair now, you asshole,” she laughed as he pulled his hand out from her shirt.

He stayed pressed against her in the snow and ignored the water soaking through his clothing. Her breath was coming out in puffs and her cheeks were rosy. There was definitely a glow about her these days.

Without thinking he pressed his lips to hers and he felt the hardness in his jeans compile. She allowed his tongue to touch hers before she pushed on his chest.

“We can’t.”

“I know,” he whispered.

He did. She was off limits again and he wasn’t a fan of those times. When she committed to anyone who wouldn’t allow this part of their friendship to be what it was.

“Just tell everyone I was kissing you hello,” he joked.

“When you see me you kiss me hello? Like that?” she repeated with a roll of her eyes.

He stood up and pulled her out of the bank. “Yeah, just like that.”


	12. 2011, I'm Flirting With You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> IBG 2011

There were more faces she recognized circling the party than not and she was happy they agreed to go. She was part of a two-person team that needed to be consulted before making plans and for the most part, she still felt like she had some independence. Except when she didn’t because he was who he was and she tried not to fault him for that.

A familiar hand brushed along her back and she knew immediately it wasn’t anyone else. It was the man she spent almost an hour reminiscing. The man who showed up for her charity event and asked her about kissing costars. She made an innuendo about twenty-five minutes being good enough except she knew with him that was close to accurate.

That was the problem when you kept a secret with another person. Sometimes it wanted to slip out.

“Having fun?” he asked.

His face wasn’t flushed but he had all the other signs of alcohol induced euphoria. There was a light sheen of sweat on his brow and he was still wearing that same shirt from earlier. It reminded her of something else but she couldn’t place it.

“I am,” she replied. She looked around the smoky room beyond him and then up to his face. “You are too.”

“Sad to say good-bye for another break but kind of nice to work on other things,” he said with a shrug.

She looked down at his hand that was now rubbing along her bicep in a soothing way and his eyes were smiling at her. “So what’s on your summer to do list?”

“I think I’m done the manuscript to that baseball story,” he commented. “Tea read it and thinks it should be a book.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Can you do that in a summer?”

He laughed and pulled her closer to him. “No.”

Without the fuzzy head of inebriation she felt her inhibitions in tact and but she could tell his were not. They were in a darkened corner of a crowded room and while no one was looking at them they could do something untoward yet they shouldn’t. They knew they shouldn’t. She could see the want in his face to do it anyway.

“What are you doing?” she asked as she looked down at their proximity.

He had come a long way in the last three years and wasn’t on a path of self-destruction but she could see in his face something else. She recognized it. The temptation to be bad.

Suddenly he took her hand with his, a light brown liquid sloshing in a glass in his other hand and tucked her down the hallway off the main room.

“What are you doing?” she repeated.

She was laughing but also worried they could be caught in a compromising position. Wrap parties were bad places for that. She still recalled the look on her ex-husband’s face as he walked in on what should have been a discussion but was something entirely different.

“I’m flirting with you,” he sad. He turned her into the wall and his mouth neared hers. “Then I was going to kiss you.”

She licked her lower lip in anticipation. As though she could already taste the whiskey from his mouth and everything else that he was. Different from her man and more dangerous.

“David…” she started.

He took the last sip of his drink and pushed his mouth into hers. The sharp smoky flavour of the whiskey played on their lips. His tongue was cool from the ice and she suddenly wanted everything from him. Her hand went to the buckle on his belt and she stopped herself from tugging open the leather.

He pulled her hand from between them and pushed into her. They were in another almost public setting and he was hard for her. They had terrible timing and overactive libidos to contend with. Every thought she had about the life she built, the people who counted on her to be part of that couple instead of independent Gillian who kissed who she wanted.

“Say it’s okay,” he whispered against her mouth as he ground himself into her.

Her head felt foggy from the kisses and smoky atmosphere. Her sex felt swollen already in anticipation for him and her body ached for the pain of going to bed with him. It always hurt a little with him but in all the ways she liked it to.

“Just say that it’s okay,” he whispered. “I need to hear you say it.”

She looked into his crazy green eyes, from one over dilated pupil to his other that was wide as a saucer. He might be on something but he wanted permission for all the lines he was trying to cross.

“It’s okay,” she assured him and his hand closed over her breast.

A few more fervent kisses and she was trying to remember why this was a bad idea the first time around. Oh right, because they had other people. They always belonged to other people it seemed. She didn’t want to belong to anyone, even him if it meant she could be kissed like this a little more.

His mouth moved to her neck and she stopped him before he could bite and mark her. He liked to do that too.

“We have to stop,” she sighed.

His face was disappointed but also understood. “Maybe we can all have dinner tomorrow?”

He said it so casually as though his erection was pushing into her thigh and his hand wasn’t feeling her nipple through her bra and shirt.

“Sounds good,” she agreed.

He took a step back and adjusted himself. “Okay.”

Just like that, he was looking at her like a friend instead of the dangerous element of tantalizing seduction.

She wiped the edges of her mouth. “Great.”


	13. 2013, If You Keep Looking at Me Like That We Won't Make it to a Bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during SDCC 2013

They weren’t supposed to do this. They had decided they were better as friends and they had somehow worked through the last twenty years of bull shit. They put egos, pay disparity, bad press and a long list of misunderstandings behind them. They worked through it and became friends, mostly because of her stubbornness to give up on him as a person and partly because he grew up.

They had enjoyed emailing or talking on the phone when something came up. She called him to chat about the reunion tour of the comic con’s she planned to do and it turned into a four hour rehash of good times and bad times. When she hung up the phone she looked at the smudges on the screen from her face and her ear was numb. 

So what the hell were they doing? She had her skirt around her waist and he was pressing her into the wall of a hotel hallway in San Diego. This was practically in public and the last time either of them engaged it this kind of public display, there were cameras rolling and they laughed off the actions as a joke. 

His tongue slipped into her mouth again and she tasted the cold beer he drank earlier with dinner. Everything about him felt new yet familiar. He was leaner these days from yoga and running but just as strong. The lack of difficulty in which he found to pick her up and pushed his body into hers was surprising. The days worth of stubble scratched against her skin and her nerve endings were on fire.

She broke the kiss to try to see in his eyes something else. She waited to look for hesitation or misplaced passion. Was he using her as a substitute for someone else?

“If you keep looking at me like that we won’t make it to a bed,” he whispered as he ground the evidence of his arousal into the dampness of her panties. 

“What are we doing?” she asked him as he kissed the sensitive skin at the collar of her blouse. 

“Resolving some tension,” he whispered into her neck. “We’ve done this before.”

She pushed on his chest and he looked at her in the eye. He was looking right into her and she tried to communicate her fear and hesitation but all she felt at that moment was the need to have him in her bed. 

“You want to talk about this first?” he asked. He sounded sincere but his hips didn’t stop pushing into her in a slow dry-hump that was making her crazy.

“I want this I just don’t want it to change us,” she answered honestly.

He kissed her softly and she felt the promise in it that it wouldn’t. Except it would because everything they did afterwards felt more charged than it had in the past. They felt more open to touch and flirt. A microscope would be flashed on their interactions yet she didn’t regret it for a second.


	14. 2013, I Think We Need To Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SDCC 2013

  
It was purely hormonal with them right now. He felt himself humming and his hands wanted to grab at her. She was touching him softly and laughing at his jokes. It had been a long time since he felt this way. She made him feel this way.

All it took was a suggestive comment to get him going again. She made an offhand remark that morning that ended them up almost naked in a nearly public place. Again.

She had spent last night curled into his chest and drooling more than just a little. He didn’t mind even though it was a little gross. His shoulder fell asleep before the rest of him did as they watched old episodes to try to job her brain for comic con questions. It didn’t work.

Before the sun was completely up, she gathered her clothes and tried to sneak back to her room. They agreed before she kissed him good-bye they would be good for the rest of their stay in San Diego.

When she arrived in the lobby with her hair looking like he could run his fingers through it and that dress, he knew he was a goner.

“I think we need to talk,” he grumbled as he wrapped cool fingers around her bicep.

She trotted in her high heels to keep up and she was breathless. The woman chose the worst shoes to wear to these events but he knew her insecurities about being so short. The woman had a personality that could fill a room and he often forgot her actual height. Yet she wasn’t happy unless she was two or three inches taller.

He pressed her into the wall of the hallway of the convention centre and she let out a giggle. It was characteristically impish and went to his groin. His turgid flesh didn’t need anymore encouragement.

He wanted her. He wanted her since he had her the night before. Long fingers skipped up her milky flesh to silky undergarments. She gasped as he fingered at her own swollen flesh.

"Not here," she pleaded but her lips that were clean of lipstick and sticky from his saliva were begging to be kissed again. “Oh...”

His mouth tasted like the coffee they just ordered. He asked for his to be like hers. Adorable.

His body was muscular against hers and she felt the familiar sensation of his blanketing ability to hide her away. She spent so much of her life trying to hide, even at these events. She would never go back to the familiar red that he loved, hated then loved again.

"You never kiss me enough." He pressed his mouth to hers.

"You have to meet me in New York City if you want that rectified," she whispered after he pulled away.

“You think it’s that easy to clear a schedule?” he teased. Her schedule was much busier than his these days. He was writing books, writing music and basically living the life of a well-to-do hippy. He even had some of the tattoos to go with the persona.

Another swipe along her sensitive nub and her hand went to grab at him. Her eyes closed as the sensations washed over her. This was more risky than the hallway last night.

“Oh God,” she sighed. They really had to stop. She pushed weakly on his hand. "David..."

"Stop?" He asked as the digit pushed father inside her.

Her eyes dared to look past him in hopes no one was around. They were alone. Handlers, assistants, security were gone. This was a hallway he picked for them to be alone and have some space away from everything. He wanted her completely.

"I don’t want you to but you have to stop," she said finally.

Reluctantly he pulled his hand from under the layers of her dress and tasted the sweet juices of her. He could make such a personal thing seem so natural between them. As though the last twenty years was entirely this more than the animosity or the frustration they took out on one another. Throughout the years it had this but these days there was nothing else holding them back. Just their own hang ups and geography.

"Later?"

"Later," she promised.


	15. 2013, I Think I'm In Love With You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SDCC 2013

He watched as she packed her bag instead of watching the television that he turned on to distract him. He watched as she checked and double checked the closet for items she thought she was forgetting because she did that. He watched her as she zoned out for a moment before taking out her phone to text someone and smile at the reply.

He kicked his shoes off soon after he got here and his socks were about to go next. Her room always was more balmy than his. She constantly complained of feeling too cold and he advised her to increase her iron intake and have her thyroid checked. She usually just nodded at the suggestion and forgot to have her GP set up the test.

“What is this?” she asked as she breezed past the television.

He focused his eyes on the screen that was previously a 1980s movie he had enjoyed but was now infomercials for hair plugs.

“I’m thinking of getting plugs,” he teased before turning the television off.

“Where would you put them?” she asked and then glanced down to his crotch. “Maybe get red down there to spice things up.”

“That would look weird,” he said and shook his head.

“What’s going on?” She put her hands on her hips and studied his face.

It was the same face she looked at him when her alter-ego was trying to disprove his theory about aliens when he was right. He was always right. It was annoying to always be right but still listen to someone be forced to tell you that you’re wrong. That grew tired pretty quickly.

Why the hell did people love that show so much?

“Feels like it’s been a long week,” he says.

“It has been, these are draining but they’re fun,” she replied. “But that’s not it.”

Sometimes being around someone who knew you better than any spouse or sibling you ever had was annoying. More often than not it proved to be delightful but he was having a crisis of faith, as it were.

“What is it?” she asked as she perched herself on the bed next to him.

It mirrored a scene they had played but no one was sick or shot. This was just post-coital friendly banter while she packed to leave his vicinity until the fall.

“I’m just feeling anxious and I haven’t felt that for a while,” he admitted. “It’s probably my Pavlovian-response to having a lot of sex in a thirty six hour period.”

She nodded but she wasn’t buying it. “Or?”

“Or I think I’m in love with you and I’m terrified,” he said and her jaw dropped. He laughed at himself and she made a face. “I’m only laughing at the idea that it took me twenty years to figure out how amazing you are.”

“You didn’t know when we did the last movie or when I came to visit you at your play?” she asked. She side stepped the love confession and he appreciated that.

“Okay fifteen years,” he admitted and pulled her closer to him. “So what do I do about it?”

She kissed his lips softly and ran her hands down his face tenderly. “It will pass. We’ll be back to friends by New York.”

He knew she was lying but he appreciated her for the effort.


	16. 2015, Teach Me How To Play

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2015 Upfronts

They met for lunch at one of the places they could get away with and caught up on the things they didn’t talk about in the emails. The specifics of kids, exes and work. She mentioned the contracts and he scoffed at the disparity issue repeating itself except this time he was on her side. 

This time they knew what going to work in Vancouver would be like and this time they had to be more careful for sneaky paparazzi. She scoffed at the last part because generally Canadians didn’t do that and he found her naivete towards what people paid attention to adorable. They openly did that now, called one another adorable and allowed their affection to craze anyone who paid attention.

“So,” he started and regarded her openly. He leaned forward on his elbows conspiratorially on the table and she mimicked his pose. 

“So,” she replied in the same tone.

“I am trying to figure out a way to get you back to my place without being too obvious about it,” he admitted and she laughed. It was the kind of belly laugh that went to his groin and he felt a little helpless when she did that. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not,” she said as she wiped a tear away without smudging her eyeliner. She sat up straight and mimicked his pose again. Her hand darted across the table to run her fingers down his arm before back across the table. 

“You’re not going to let that be the way I do it?” he asked.

She pursed her lips and shook her head regretfully. “Sorry. You need to be a little more slick than that.”

He thought for a moment before he smiled. “You know, I just learned how to play Helpless on the guitar.”

“Did you?” her interest suddenly piqued. 

“I did, all the chords and lyrics at the same time like I’m Neil fucking Young,” he said with a pointed look. 

“Teach me to play?” she asked.

He only got as far as showing her how to hold the guitar before clothes were strewn all over his living room apartment. Her jacket landed behind the couch next to his jeans. Her bra was under the chair and his hands were everywhere on her body. They gave one another a work out to match their January consummation after avoiding prying eyes in Los Angeles.

The pages from his music book were scattered around them as he was buried deep inside of her making her moan loudly with a metronome keeping the pace of his thrusts on tempo. She didn’t really want the callouses on her fingers anyway.


	17. 2015, The Cutting Room

The first kiss his eyes were open and he was watching her because he couldn’t believe she chose to do that.

He kissed her before in private, out of spying eyes and a multitude of cameras. Rarely an audience besides a few friends or family. But they kissed hello, they kissed in quiet moments in kitchens while making food or on messy beds while she rode on top of him.

It had been a long time since he kissed her in public and she initiated it.

This wasn’t a joke for the crew. This wasn’t a prank they played for a guest star. This was allowing questions into their relationship that they didn’t like to define beyond friendship.

After the song she approached him.

“That was fun,” she whispered.

“I need your forgiveness,” he whispered to her and kissed her softly. “I’m not going to be able to stop smiling about this for a long time.”

She let him hug her for longer than he knew she was comfortable with. They were sweaty under the hot lights of the pub but it felt good. Organic popped up into his mind. It was all organic.

“It’s okay,” she whispered back and ducked back stage to the green room where his manager was waiting.

 

***

 

The air in the hotel was thick and cool from the air conditioning unit forcing air from outside and trying regulate the room to something more tolerable. It was too hot to think. Spring time in New York was just humidity and noise but felt better because she was there.

“When do you go back to London?” he asked as he drew a finger up the skin of her naked back.

She was laying on her stomach with the pillow bunched under her face and the crisp Egyptian cotton sheets covering her backside.

“I have a thing in D.C. this week,” she replied. “A few more parties and things to do here.”

“This is a nice place,” he mentioned as his finger traveled down her back again. He saw goosebumps forming on skin. “But the air conditioning is terrible.”

She pushed herself up on her elbows and looked around the room. “I guess. Nicer than your place in Vancouver or my last apartment in the city.”

“Keeping it real today,” he murmured as his hand slipped under the sheet to caress her backside and she looked up at him through her eyelashes that reminded him of the impish young woman he knew who hated the rain but moved to the dreariest city on the planet.

“What are you doing?” she asked as his hand slipped between her thighs.

His finger pushed inside her and he felt the slippery residue from their earlier encounter.

“Again?” she asked. He loved looking at her like this with a messy bun on the top of her head and her skin freckled from time by a pool. She looked relaxed and assured - a far cry from the woman he worked beside for nine years.

“I’m all a tingle from this week,” he joked as a second digit joined the first.

Her hips lifted off the bed slightly and she moaned. That was all the encouragement he needed.

“I don’t want us to spend the summer not having this,” he told her as he kissed the skin across her shoulder blades. “I’m not losing you again to a schedule that doesn’t allow us this time.”

“I told you I’m not going anywhere,” she said as she watched him over her shoulder.

He threw the sheet back and rubbed a hand appreciatively across her backside.

“You gotta stop saying you have flabby thighs,” he commented as he pulled her hips up and her knees underneath her. He rubbed himself against her entrance and she took a long breath. “These are not flabby.”

“They’re not as toned as they once were,” she commented as she pushed her face into her elbow. He slowly inched his way inside of her and she sighed. “You remember?”

“I remember thinking it seemed impossible for someone who smoked like a chimney to have such a fascination with exercise,” he mused as he thrust once. His pace began a slow steady rhythm and she gripped the pillow as he moved against her. “I loved them then and I love them now. I think I’ve been in love with you my whole life.”

“You only say that romantic crap- oh!” she gasped as he pushed in deeper.

“Okay fine,” he grunted as he pushed into her again. “But I really really like you.”

She laughed but her joy quickly turned into a different kind of elation. Her climax was building and he was hitting exactly the right spots inside of her. He could feel it all around him as she squeezed and milked at his swollen flesh.

As his own release was approaching he felt relief in feeling her clamp down around him. He felt himself floating as his rapture took over.

They did this too well for middle-aged people. Maybe it was the history or the chemistry but maybe it was just how it worked when you finally got your head out of your ass.He meant him, and not her. She had been amazing this whole time as his friend and frequently as a lover.

“God you feel good,” he sighed as he pulled out from her.

“The feeling is mutual,” she said and kissed him quickly. He watched her make her way to the bathroom and he looked down at himself as he twitched against his thigh. He wanted to say congratulations to his cock for performing so admirably this past week but he knew it was all hormonal due to her.

She returned and pulled on one of his t-shirts over her small frame. She put her hands on her hips in the way she did when her alter ego was listening to his alter ego talk about aliens except she was blonde and just a little older.

“Are you going to make me that omelette you promised me?”

His face lit up. “Yeah, it has bananas in it! You going to put some pants on to go across town or are you leaving the hotel like that?”

She looked down at her naked legs. “Right.”


	18. 2015, Discarded Clothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during 2015 Vancouver Filming

They didn’t normally go home in costume but the rain hadn’t washed out the set in almost twenty years. They had shut down once due to snow but this time they were put into cars and sent away due to a flash flood.

Vancouver wasn’t handling the rain as well as it did before. Or maybe she just remembered it all differently. They had long days this time around but she didn’t remember it being like this. The dialogue was chunky but they were given more time to learn a script.

Maybe it was because they were doing only six in three months and last time they would have tried to get them to do another four in that time. What they were expected of while learning so much was bordering on torture. And then there was the pay gap.

He reached across the seat in the back of the SUV as they made their way towards her rental house. His touch interrupted her thoughts and they exchanged comfortable smiles.

“I think the weather report said we had another three hours of rain,” he told her.

She glanced down to the phone in his other hand and saw the blue background of the app. “Good thing there’s food at my place.”

She was referring to the fact that he had suggested they take cover at his hotel but the room service left her much to be desired. She liked coming to a home, relaxing in a quiet space where tea and chocolate were waiting for her.

The driver pulled as close to the front door as he could and they dashed inside. The house was quiet and seemed excessive for just her but he knew she got it for the purpose of having her having all her kids come stay with her. So far it was just her, Piper and the dog.

“Where’s Nelson?” he asked looking around.

“He’s with the dog sitter until nine,” she replied as she set her bag and keys down on the hall table.

He frowned. “Oh.”

She stood herself in front of the mirror and slowly peeled the red wig off her head. The pain she was enduring every day just not to lose her hair was a lot. Such a sacrifice to stay blonde and she leaned in close to see the dark brown roots popping out under the mop of hair stuck to her head.

David loosened his tie and watched her in fascination as she slowly removed all the pins from her hair. “I can’t believe you have to do this every day.”

“They should have let Scully be blonde,” she remarked as she began to massage her scalp.

“Let me,” he said and reached his nimble fingers to work the follicles away from her head. Her knees buckled at the sensation and she reached out to the desk. “Good?”

“You have no idea,” she moaned.

“Why don’t you sit on the couch while I do this?” he invited. It was her house but he just wanted her to be close to a surface he could strip her clothes on.

She pushed his hands away and hers went to his tie. “Since we’re trading bad come-ons, why don’t you come up to the master bedroom and see the view?”

Their clothes left a trail to the bedroom where they ignored the view of the Fraser River and tasted each other. He made her forget about her headaches and exhaustion while he buried himself deep inside of her. She saw stars and lights flash behind her eyes before they were called back to set.


	19. 2015, You're the Only One who Understands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during revival filming

She was worn out from the emotional strain needed for the scene. She got it in one shot like a pro but she felt wrecked. They called cut just as the skies opened and a crack rang out above them.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her into his trailer on the set where they had taken solace before. Her snack of fresh fruit sat on the counter, mostly eaten and waiting to be thrown out. The air smelled like apples and his sweat.

She wanted to tug her wig off but there was something about them in costume, play acting as they pretended to work out their frustrations as other people. Two people who mirror their feelings for one another. Two people who went through hell and back.

He pulled her to him and kissed her with twenty-three years of need and passion.

“I feel silly in this wig,” she said as she pushed on the base of her skull.

“Feels like old times,” he whispered as he drew a finger along her collarbone. She toyed at a few strands of the wig.

“When was I this colour?"

"Nineteen ninety-six and nineteen ninety-seven,” he said confidently but with a gentle smile. It was more his tone now, to be softer and sweeter to her.

"How can you remember these things?“ she asked.

"You always did like the hash more than I did,” he teased. “Kills the brain cells you claim you lost when having those kids of yours."

She poked him playfully in the ribs and he grabbed her almost roughly, the way she liked when she needed something affirming or to wake her up. She felt sleepy after emotional scenes. She needed him now.

He kissed her again and laid her down on the couch of his trailer.She pulled on the zipper of his trousers and pulled his hardened cock from the briefs and through the fly of his pants.

"Let me get you undressed,” he whispered as she wiggled her panties down her legs.

"No,“ she sighed. "Just like this. Like them."

"You’re fucked up,” he murmured into her neck but he felt elated to feel the dampness between her legs anyway.

“You never cared before,” she reminded him as she pulled her dress up around her waist.

“We were young and not entirely single at that time,” he whispered as he rubbed the head of his cock at her entrance.

She pulled him into her with the heels of her feet on his backside. “You’re fucked up.”

“You’re the only one who understands,” he whispered as he pushed into her.

“God, you feel good,” she sighed as he thrust in and out.

He felt like what she needed. It was quiet inside as the rain beat down around them. The air grew sticky and sweet as he made her forget the sadness she worked out for her alter-ego. She helped him forget too.


	20. 2015, You Lied to Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during 2015 Filming

He brushed by her without a second look and her chin tucked while her face registered the action. He was a little more than pissed and she could feel it radiating off of him.

“Hey,” she called to him. Her hair was tied so tightly into her scalp by the wig attached to her head that she had no inclination to softly coaxing the truth out of him. Not while she was still dressed as her character and they had another four hours left in the day. “What gives?”

He clenched his jaw and he turned slowly to her. “You lied to me.”

“You lied to me first,” she quipped.

“Are you fucking serious? You lied to me first?” he repeated with disdain. “We’re not kids anymore, Gillian. You can’t keep fucking using those terms of you did it first so I’ll do it.”

“You like to set the parameters to this arrangement and I don’t know why you have to act like it’s some kind of exclusive thing when we both fucking know it’s not,” she snapped.

His hands rubbed down his face and he held his palms up in front of her. His body shook. “You’re impossible.”

“So are you,” she replied and pushed her way past him. He grabbed her arm and she spun around to him. “Let go.”

“All we did was go to a farmers market, I don’t know why you’re acting like this,” he told her.

“And all I did was get lunch,” she repeated.

She just lied about who she met for lunch. The handsome Danish man who she frequently called handsome and danced for hours while wearing a black ball gown. All for the sake of the show.

“Lunch like we used to get lunch?” he asked as he implied the long breaks they took while her life was falling apart and before his came together. “You know what I’m talking about.”

She pushed on his chest and he let go of her arm. “No, you asshole. The only costar I’ve ever gone to bed with was you. Besides, he’s married.”

“That status never bothered you before,” he reminded her.

It took every ounce of her willpower not to slap him across the face. The dalliances between them during both of their marriages wasn’t something either of them were proud of. She was trying to be better than that - for herself and to be a better example for her daughter.

“Are you jealous?” she asked.

“Of that guy?” he said snidely. He was jealous and he was really horrible to be around when he was.

“Fuck off,” she spat at him and she could feel his eyes on her as she walked away.

When she slammed the door on her trailer it was kind enough to stay shut. She clenched her fists and tossed the robe she had on over her character’s night shirt across the small enclosure.

The door opened and he didn’t ask to come in. When he locked the door she knew they were about to work this out another way. Not with words but with their bodies. They would level the playing field, they would exert their frustrations and he would feel better once he had her again.

It wasn’t emotionally mature but they weren’t always the best with that. It was quiet and rough on the carpeted floor. The make up department put powder on her knees for her to sit on the bed in the upcoming scene and he ranted a monologue at her. Just like old times.


	21. 2015, Wanna Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set Filming 2015

They stood waiting patiently in the cold Vancouver parking lot with misty air as they waited to start the next shot. They were having fun tonight, even with it being a night shoot and his sleep schedule being royally messed up. He didn’t feel as tired or annoyed as he used to remember feeling when they did this.

He made her laugh when they were emailed the scripts and he commented this would be ‘superior.’ It was a little sad that it was so true but at least they could enjoy shooting this time around.

He saw her shifted on her heels and shiver slightly.

“Somebody wanna get a jacket for Gillian?” he called out and a PA approached with a coat that looked like his.

She put it on snuggie-style and told her she should have patent the idea back in the nineties, she would be a millionaire on a strange idea.

“Do you think someone is really a millionaire because of that?” she asked with a shiver.

God, her wonder at how the world worked was refreshing and frustrating at the same time. He pulled up “maker of the snuggie” on his phone and she narrowed her eyes at the screen as she pulled it to the right distance for her eyes.

“That’s fucked up!” she said with a laugh at the sight of a man being worth 200 million over an idea to turn a choir jacket into a fleece blanket. That’s how she described it.

He reached a hand to her back and rubbed up and down. “Wanna dance?”

She looked around at the crew eyeing them and nodded a little.

“Okay, so watch me,” he instructed and he turned around to begin the dance he was rehearsing for their upcoming episode.

“Oh, I know these moves,” she teased.

He had practiced in his trailer, in his hotel room and hers for the last two weeks. Every day he took some time to improve every move because if he was going to look like an idiot, he was going to look like a skilled idiot.

He lifted his leg and looked over to see her do the same. He taught he the box step moves for his line dancing performance.

She followed along to his square dance and when he clapped she clapped. It was adorable.

“You did pretty good,” he commented. “Are you sure I can’t talk you into being one of the girls there?”

She stopped laughing and looked at him squarely.

“Oh okay,” he responded and she laughed again. “Just a thought.”

“I saw those costumes,” she commented as she looked up at him with a shake of her head. “This wouldn’t look good in that.”

He stepped closer to her and put his hand on her back again. “I’m fairly certain from what I saw this morning that it would.”

He caught a flush to her cheeks and she shook her head at him. They flirted more publicly these days but it didn’t mean they could have those kinds of conversations in public.

“What?” he asked with a laugh. He shoved his hands in his pockets and laughed at her scowl.

“You know what,” she replied back. It was like talking in front of precocious four year olds these days. If anything slipped out of their mouths it would find its way to be announced in public.

He looked around the set to see a few PAs watching them but the rest of the crew working away. He pulled her into him and rubbed his hands up and down her back.

“I don’t give a shit,” he said happily and he kissed the top of her head. “You can call this adult friendship shit and shrug it away.”

Her arms left her sides and she moved her small hands to touch him under his jacket. “You can make this PDA crap up to me later by pouring me a hot bath.”

“Sure, if it’s a bath for two,” he whispered back. The look in her eyes told him it would be an active bath and he tried to will himself back into a flaccid state. “Oh wait, don’t move away just yet.”

The parking lot filled with the sound of her laughter.

“That’s not helping.”


	22. 2015, In the Tent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if their first time was 22 years after their first meeting?

 

He showed up for his last night, looking bloody and beaten as Fox Mulder. His costume was sweaty and dishevelled. This was the antithesis to his last day each and every other time he said good-bye to Fox Mulder but this time, he didn’t feel like it was the end again; he felt like it could be a new beginning in more ways than one.

His optimism wasn't tampered by much. The networks were much more open to short seasons, Gillian would commit to the time away if it was only three months and the network was pretty pleased they did it on a Canadian dollar. There was a joke in there somewhere but he just couldn’t put his finger on it. They paid more for talent but less for the production. He’d have to work on that by the time the press circus of circuits started.

As he looked around the set he started feeling a little less than thrilled he spotted her. After 23 years, he was able to pick out the stand-ins from the real thing. He always could, even with a wig on.

She was standing outside the tent talking with Robbie and laughing but shivering under her coat. She pointed behind her and dashed inside. The young actor was left standing there and nodded to himself before walking off to another tent a few yards away.

Slowly he made his way through the crew, saying hello to everyone then heading into the tent that was set up for just them. She was in there alone, sitting next to a heater and shivering slightly. For all the years he’s known her, she’s always run cold. That couldn’t be said for more than just her body temperature. Everything else about her was warm and inviting. Her laugh, her inclusive nature and now he knew that her body was also. He was able to experience it first had, for the first time just on Sunday.

“Hi,” she said, as he stepped in. She smiled hesitantly and he walked over to kiss her on the lips. He guessed it was still okay to do that. “You look great.”

He looked down at his shirt and jeans and laughed self deprecatingly. “Yeah. Gotta look like shit for my last night. Go out with a nice memory for Ham-couver.”

“That’s a bad joke,” she said with a roll of her eyes but he could see her smiling too.

“Ham sandwich? Ham-couver?” he laughed. “It’s the ultimate of dad-jokes. I tell those now since I’m old.”

“What’s going on?” she asked with her hands in his and searching his eyes.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just.. Uh... Are we okay?”

She smiled with a look of knowing what he was referring to. They finally had given into their desires and went to bed together. A few times if he recalled correctly and his memory wouldn’t fog that instance for anything.

She smiled. “Of course.”

”I just...”

”Had a good time?” she prompted and they laughed. “I know what you mean. I was a little worried we were going to royally fuck up a friendship we finally found with each other.”

It was his turn to prompt her. ”But?”

”I don’t think it will,” she said with a shrug.

How was she being so nonchalant? She always felt everything so deeply in a way he appreciated. Maybe it didn’t mean as much to her as it did to him.

”I can see where your mind is going with that and I’m going to stop you right there,” she replied and patted his chest. She stepped back and perched herself up on her chair near the heater. “I really don’t want you to think I’m...

Her voice trailed off and he could see her finishing the sentence in her head. That could infuriate or endear him to her depending on their friendship.

”Gillian?”

She looked up at him from her chair and smiled regretfully. “I don’t want this to come out wrong.”

“Maybe say it and see if I’m as much of a sensitive sap as you’re making me out to be,” he offered.

“I don’t want a boyfriend,” she said bluntly and he jokingly grabbed his heart. His face turned to a mock pout and she laughed. “I don’t expect you to be my boyfriend. I just like that you’re my friend and we did that.”

“So no friend-zone anymore?” he asked.

“You’re acting like I’m the one who kept you there,” she answered and he made a contemplative face as he sat in his chair next to hers. She laughed again. “Shut up!”

“I’m just saying I would have gone there in 1993.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You would?”

“Second guessing me is allowed when the cameras are rolling. When you’re not that woman you have to take me at face value,” he quipped and she slapped his arm. “Wasn’t I clear in 1993?”

“You had a girlfriend!”

“So did you,” he teased and they both laughed.

“You were just so touchy I didn’t think that was an intent thing on your part. I just thought you were being that actor-type,” she replied.

“We should have had this discussion before we had sex,” he said with a sigh and she nodded.

That was true. They should have laid more out on the table but it wasn’t like that Sunday night. They had been enjoying a nice meal. She made a vegetarian curry with a tandoori spice and it shocked him at how amazing it tasted. She had white wine for him to drink and she opted out of for some fruity water.

They were alone at her house except for Nelson at their feet and music on the stereo. It was quiet and romantic but not at all what either of them agreed to. They got swept up in the moment as they drank decaf coffee on the deck and watched the sunset talking about how much they used to argue and fight. They talked about their lives recently and how much they felt like they had both changed and grown but they kept off the topic of feelings for one another. It was one of the nicest dinners they had together and so when he looked down at her sitting on the wooden bench with the orange glow of dusk on her face he kissed her. Unprompted. No jokes or crew to hoot for them. They kissed as two people with romantic intentions of bedding the other that night.

They kissed for longer than necessary but that’s what you did when you were sleeping with someone for the first time. You went through all the steps. He did them two or three times to make sure she was completely satisfied. And when he finally felt himself inside of her he had to pause at the gravity of what knowing someone for 23 years and the anticipation of this moment.

She was everything he wanted and hoped she would be. She was tight and hot while wet and inviting. She moaned at every thrust and kissed him to a way he felt in his toes. Her mouth was a thing of beauty and he experienced every trick she had on her.

If he didn’t know better he might think it was the parting goodbye of two lovers but this was their beginning.

It was all he could think about since he left her place Monday morning after their, yes their third time.

He told her if he stayed he’d want to try again but his cock was tired. He made a face and she laughed as she kicked him out. She needed to try to get some sleep if she was going to shoot all night.

And as they waited for their call in the tent on a cold Vancouver street, he worried that was the only time for them and he told her that.

“I think we can have that and have our friendship,” she said cautiously. “Without too much expectations or hurt feelings.”

“You think there will be some?” he asked.

She put her small hand in his and he brought it to his lips to warm with his breath.

“I know there will be but I’m willing to have that if it means more of Sunday night,” she answered. She looked off to the side. “I would kiss you right now but you kind of look like hell and they just did my make up for the third time.”

He leaned in and kissed her anyway. If this was going to work it had to be somewhere in the middle.

 


	23. 2016, If You Die I'm going to Kill You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during revival press tour

He was sitting on a the hotel room chair with his head between his knees and a paper bag at his mouth. The sweat on his back was trickling down to mark the suede chair and she wondered if they had scotch guarded the material before she checked in. That or no one else had tried the acrobatics they had in that room before them.

“Are you okay?” she asked as she knelt in front of him. “Do I need to call a doctor?”

He pulled the bag away from his face and he looked at her. “Since I’m not supposed to be here in your hotel room while we do all this promo shit, you probably don’t want to do that.”

She sighed because she knew he was right. “If you die on me, I’m going to killyou.”

“Gillian Anderson caught with dead lover David Duchovny in LA hotel room. Her representatives still say they were just friends,” he repeated as though it was a newspaper headline. “Who will you give your first interview to?”

“You’re not funny,” she said as she stood up. She folded her arms across her bare chest and looked at him as her alter ego had looked at his alter ego hundreds of times. She had gotten pretty good at giving him the disapproving look. 

“They would rent this room out for the next ten years at a higher rate,” he quipped.

“You must be feeling fine, you’re being an ass.”

“My head still feels light,” he admitted.

“That’s why sitting on your face isn’t the way to do that,” she replied. 

She was talking about how he had insisted he taste her. It was a good thigh work out, she was able to control the pressure but suddenly he forgot how to breathe through his nose. As she came he was suddenly panting for air and his head felt light. She sat him up and maneuvered him to the chair with surprisingly little difficulty. 

The naked acrobatics of this afternoon would not be repeated again. 

“We’ve done it before,” he reminded her.

She handed him a bottle of water and looked at the instructions on her phone. “Drink this. If your pulse isn’t normal in half an hour I’m taking you to a doctor.”

He ran a finger up the tanned skin on her naked belly. “Like this? You might give other people a heart attack.”

“That better not be what that was,” she warned him.

“I’m an old man,” he said with a pout. 

She climbed into his lap and kissed his sweaty cheek. “I hate your hair like this.”

“You’re an impish child,” he mock scolded her.

“Just like old times.”


	24. 2016, Jimmy Kimmel Live Skit

They knew their lines, the crew was waiting to film the final shots and she felt slightly nervous at being prompted to kiss him on camera. It was one thing to do it on stage at his concert when she knew he wouldn’t try to slip her the tongue. But this was something else.

It reminded her of filming the first movie and they “goofed around.” Yet, somehow millions of fans were able to purchase a silly but intimate moment between them when things were less than stellar.

They managed to block it and shoot the majority of it without breaking and she felt like she was getting a chance to prove chops with comedy in this 3 minute skit. She was feeling pretty good that she hadn’t forgotten a line, laughed at Jimmy as he munched on that ridiculous sandwich or at David’s giant wig. They shot their banter and suddenly they were kissing in front of “Keith.”

His mouth was open and against better judgement, hers opened too. This was acting, this was part of a comedy bit. Remember this is supposed to be funny.

But somehow he had them barreled up on a table and she was on top while one hand slipped down to cup her backside. The kiss broke for a moment for “Mulder” to tell “Keith” to fuck off and his hand went into her hair as though he forgot, his fingers laced into the wig. He forgot he wasn’t kissing her in the darkened corners of a studio lot, he wasn’t pushing her up against a wall in his trailer between takes and they weren’t in the privacy of any hotel room they had frequented over the last three years. No cellphone on vibrate, no assistants told to hold their calls for an hour or two and there was no precursor conversation that nothing had changed, they were still just two adults, two friends.

And they kissed as a joke, as a goof off or a lark like they pretended was so funny almost 20 years ago.

The kiss didn’t break while the wig started to pop off and suddenly a director called cut. Luckily, the room filled with laughter and someone shouted “good!”

She pushed herself up from on top of him and started to move. “Your hand?”

He released her backside and picked up the wig that fell beside his head. “Do you need help getting down?”

“Shut the fuck up,” she laughed and wiggled herself down to the floor.


	25. 2016, Are you Jealous 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during 2016

This was not how this visit was supposed to go. They had 72 hours together and they were supposed to spend it hardly clothed and making one another moan. They weren’t supposed to be arguing over breakfast foods and twitter flirting.

“I don’t like it, that’s all,” he said with a shrug of nonchalance but she could tell it was something more than that. He snapped the newspaper in front of him to hide his face.

“He’s someone I see a lot at the conventions,” she reiterated as though she hadn’t spent any time with anyone else at a convention. Except the only person was him and he forgot that frequently. “You know, the things I do that you should do more of?”

He looked at her with a mixture of annoyance and frustration. “You don’t get it. You don’t see how it looks.”

“Wait a minute, are you jealous?” she asked.

He shook his head at her. She had asked him this before when it came to other men in her life but she was usually sleeping with them and not him. So when she looked at him with that incredulity and bewilderment he immediately felt the jealousy surge and bile rise up in his throat.

“Are you sleeping with him?” he countered as he set the paper down next to his fruit bowl.

“No,” she said flatly.

No emotion, no outrage and no distaste for the question.

“Ae you sleeping with anyone besides me?” he asked.

“No. Are you sleeping with anyone besides me?” she asked.

These were questions they worked out the last time they got back together. They couldn’t do this if they weren’t with just each other and as much as the abstinence fatigued them both, they made it work. It was an exercise in patience for both of them.

“No,” he said honestly.

“Then fucking _stop it_ ,” she said tersely.

His face contorted into one of thoughtful reflection. He could feel her cool foot rubbing against the hair on his leg under the table as her face expressed one of a calm exterior. He could see the gape of her blouse to the cleavage and ample bosom. The radio played softly in the background some eclectic music she had picked and he realized if he admitted it, they could move on. She was too stubborn to go to bed with him while he festered over other possible lovers. That wasn’t supposed to be what they did. It was supposed to be easier this time around because they were older, wiser and had a sense of what humility was. There were more complications from kids to geography but since they weren’t working ten months a year, sixteen hours a day together, they felt good. They felt free.

“I’m jealous,” he admitted.

She looked at him with her icy blue eyes. “I know. I’m not sleeping with him.”

“What about her?” he asked as he held up the entertainment section that featured her and a young ingenue.

“I don’t like them _that_ young,” she laughed.


	26. 2016, David Proposes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set 2016, April

He was playing that night in a hideaway hole of a bar and she promised to come and wait back stage. The last concert nearly broke her twitter alerts with pictures of them kissing twice on stage and David grew tired of denying whatever it was they were doing.

A lot had happened in a year.

They were older, wiser and did she mention older?

It fell out of the side pocket and she crouched down to pick up the velvety box. He came out of the bathroom with a toothbrush in his mouth and a dumbstruck look on his face.

She shoved the ring box back in the bag and put his overnight bag on the chair in her room.

“You don’t want to talk about that?” he asked.

“I want you to stop asking me questions you know I’m going to say no to,” she snapped.

He took the toothbrush out of his mouth and swallowed. “Why?”

“You live here and I don’t,” she reminded him. “You live in LA too, and I don’t. Geography, remember? Stop being romantic and trying to fix us.”

He crossed the space between them. “Then admit you love me.”

“I do love you,” she agreed. “I just don’t want to be married again. I don’t want to change everything again. Especially with all we both have going on.”

“You just don’t want to be married to me,” he countered.

“Well that’s bull shit,” she snapped.

“What if I asked you on stage?” he asked flatly. “You would have to say yes.”

She dug the box out of his bag and put it in his hand. “Ask me now.”

“Marry me.”

She smiled sadly. “No.”

“April is the cruelest month,” he said opening the box. He would nurse a broken heart on a world tour and send her texts to remind her of her third rejection of his attempts to move the relationship into something more traditional. “Would you have said yes if the diamond was candy instead?”

“ _Maybe_ if it was made of chocolate,” she quipped.


	27. 2016, Please Shut Up, I can't Stand how Appealing Your Voice Is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set April 2016

The black SUV had a wide back seat, a phone charger on each side and a solid wifi signal that would take them from St Ann’s warehouse over the Brooklyn Bridge to the TriBeCa film festival.

She had a feeling of deja vu to last year when he took her back to his apartment after a liberating concert at the Cutting Room. But this wouldn’t be a fun night out. There were interviews to give, projects to talk about and an uncomfortable amount of people to give her anxiety a run for its money.

Her hair and make up had been done from doing press that day and he was ready for another press spot for his book. At least she was doing some of this with him.

She smiled across the cab to him and he took her hand.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I’m okay,” she stated but she wasn’t really.

He knew that and that’s why he was there. He wasn’t going to do this recent round of press discuss his book or the show. He was there for her. It was damned romantic.

“Do you remember last summer when we were filming and they made us break for the rain?” he asked.

His voice was slow and went straight to a tingling sensation in her belly. He knew that too.

She smiled. “Yes.”

“You had just given that fucking rock of a monologue,” he detailed as he opened her seatbelt. He pulled her across the seat and buckled her in the middle in a caring way that made her stomach flip. “We had that moment in the trailer.”

She smiled. “It was more than a moment.”

She could feel herself being calmed by his voice but something else. His hands on her and soothing her along with the close proximity made her start to feel more for him. A desire built up.

He laughed at her joke and his hands soothed her shoulders. “You got that right.”

“I appreciate what you’re doing,” she told him as she took his right hand in her left. “But I need you to stop talking.”

He kissed the side of her head. “Why?”

“David…” She shook her head. “Please shut up. I can’t stand how appealing your voice is.”

His eyes lit up and they shared a laugh. He mimicked a lock and key signal while he continued to rub her arms. They arrived in united silence for a photo shoot and had some fun with social media. If the shoe fits and all that.


	28. 2016, Look at Me, Just Breathe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> April 2016

Her nerves felt frayed and she was trying to control the anxiety bubbling up inside of her. Her heart was racing, she felt her mind going ninety-five miles an hour and she needed to focus on something simple.

Nothing was working. So far she had thought about her kids, her vacation home, the beach, floating in the ocean but nothing was helping. All she felt was more wired and on edge.

“Hey,” he touched her back lightly and she jumped. “What’s up?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Are you going to be sick?” he asked with the obvious hope she was going to say no. He knelt down what appeared to be a safe distance from where she sat on the deep armchair. “What’s going on?”

She shook her head and stood up to pace. He took a step back as she moved around in small circles and shook her hands out. She wiped sweat away from her upper lip.

“I don’t know,” she said with a small amount of despair.

She honestly didn’t. The rehearsals were going well. She was getting the monologues and the set looked great. Each day she felt more like Blanche and her mind was remembering more off book all the time. There weren’t issues

He took her into his arms to stop her pacing and he tried to mitigate the uncertainty with what he had at his disposal. Right now it was just them in a beautifully furnished NYC hotel suite. If she was anyone else he would suggest a drink. Instead he reached into the memories of what helped her before.

He sat her back down on the chair and knelt in front of her. “Just look at me and breathe, okay?”

She shook her head stubbornly.

He took her hands and pulled her closer to him.

“Hey,” he insisted. “Breathe.”

A few calming breaths and eye contact was obviously helping.

“It’s just us right now,” he reassured her and she nodded. “Tomorrow is coming and you can’t change it. Yesterday happened and you can’t fix it. You can only be right here.”

She nodded again. The mantra of a man who had to live through personal humiliations in public about something you weren’t supposed to talk about openly. It helped him accept a lot of his past mistakes and know the consequences of tomorrow would be there whether he gave into the urge or not. Best not in most cases.

“Just be right here,” he soothed.

“I’m right here,” she repeated.

“I’m right here, too,” he said and they shared a smile.

He helped more than he understood in these moments and it was best if he didn’t fully grasp how much she needed him. It was best for her to not put too much weight on that either. They could appreciate what they had without voicing too much of it. He liked to be a figure in her life now. She knew he liked to hang around and feel the comfort of being with her yet not needing to talk. She wouldn’t push him to communicate when she needed to be in her head too. So they could be alone together in a room and feel the ease of not forcing conversation while not being with other people.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”

“What are... friends?” he stumbled with the word and she laughed. “Friends yes we are friends, what are friends for?”

“Thanks, friend,” she laughed as her hand slipped between them to cup him through his jeans. He felt himself get harder and she gave him a gentle squeeze.

And she was back to herself.


	29. 2016, Come Back to Bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> May 2016

The sun filled her room with light in the early morning hours and she wondered if she would ever adjust to the New York time zone. Her body needed a break and she wondered if today would help her find that or she was destined to be overtired and ache. This wasn’t supposed to be as hard as it was and she felt every year of her age each night after a performance.

Funny how she really felt she had the wisdom play Blanche but her physical being fought against it. It wouldn’t be the first time her body ached after a day of work but this felt more personal. Probably because she could identify with the heartache and sadness inside of Blanche.

She took a sip of her coffee and heard the sheets rustle behind her. She saw him laying under the crisp white cotton with his dark skin contrasting against them and she smiled.

“Morning,” she greeted.

She stayed on the other side of the room. She liked to watch him wake up. She liked to see him stretch and yawn as he relaxed completely naked across from her with his finger crooked to invite her back to him.

People talked about how well she had aged but no one gave this man enough credit. He had a great body and all the kale and other organic shit he made her try eating lately certainly did wonders for him. She might not ever take a boxing class but pilates was a miracle exercise and he was proof of that.

“How long have you been up?” he asked with his rough modulated baritone.

After lemon tea with honey it would alter but she liked it like this like he smoked too many cigarettes and was not being as one hundred per cent together as he liked to be. It reminded her of the days when he wasn’t totally an adult and they didn’t have to be responsible.

“An hour maybe?” she guessed from her seat on the purple couch. His leather jacket was tossed over the top behind her and she caught a whiff of his cologne.

The sun was up when she woke but that didn’t say much for it being May. She was mourning the loss of her youth as everything in New York reminded her of other people and places she missed when she was young. She missed her friends that wouldn’t want to know her now because of the hassle that came with being friends with a celebrity. She missed her old girlfriend who passed away too early. She missed talking to her brother on the phone after calling her parents collect and reassuring them she would pay them back when she finally caught a break.

“It’s early,” he said as he looked at the hotel clock. “Come back to bed.”

Bed being the place he had touched and tasted her everywhere the night before. Bed being the place they could hide away and ignore the world with twitter alerts and phone calls from managers pushing them to finally settle on numbers for more seasons of a flop show that shouldn’t have had as many years on the air.

She thinks that now but she knows it put food on more than just her table and rebukes herself for being so selfish about it. There weren’t a lot of other offers and aside from three bad scripts, at least last summer was fun.

Being back in Vancouver made her feel nostalgic to 1993 but the city had changed a lot. Their old haunts were turned over to upscale franchises with not enough privacy and too many people had cell phones at the ready. Long gone were the places they escaped to on the North Shore when a ten minute break turned into an hour and a half for reset. They could go everywhere before and not be spotted but last year she was too scared to venture out with him on the off chance it would spark more rumours. Sure, they were rumours based in truth but she valued what little privacy she had left.

“You’re daydreaming,” he said with a smile and tossed back the sheet.

He was very urgent for her in the morning and she knew that. He got up to use the bathroom and she heard the water running as he brushed his teeth.

“Just about us,” she admitted when he came back to the room. He enveloped her body in a hug and she felt the heat radiating off of his body through her satin robe. He truly was the heated rock her cold blooded body wanted to cling to. “I’m feeling a little nostalgic.”

“Not hopeful to the future?” he asked with a mock pout as he scraped his stubble across her collarbone.

“I don’t know how we go from here,” she said. She told him that a lot. What then, David? What happens after I leave? He always said he didn’t know because he was tired of asking her to move back. She was tired of explaining why not.

“Well we’re not going to solve that at six twenty three on a Monday,” he said and pulled her back toward the bed. He pulled on the sash of her robe and exposed her pale flesh. “I can do one of two things right now.”

She tried to concentrate on what he could mean but his fingers were slipping inside of her and she didn’t have the mind for double talk.

“What?” she asked breathlessly as he moved his face to her sex.

“I can keep asking you to move back or we can ignore that eventually you’re leaving,” he whispered against her thigh.

“Let’s ignore it,” she pleaded as his mouth brushed against her sex.

“Whatever you say,” he said before tasting her.

She had a few more weeks before they had to have that conversation. She would be happy to bury her head in the sand until then.


End file.
